Kathleen's Window: Ocracoke Island

Friday, April 12, 2013

Today we are sitting in Teeter's Campground on Ocracoke Island, North Carolina on the southernmost point of the Outer Banks. It is pouring rain, so after walking through the rain to the bath house for showers and back again, we are having a quiet day staying put in the RV.

Yesterday was a glorious day for travel. We left Waves in late morning. I took a quick photo of the camper whose owner I met the afternoon before. Sandra and Peter are from the Netherlands and are traveling for a year with their dog Chica around Canada, the US, and Mexico. They ship their rig back home in another month from Baltimore. Their rig is a vehicle from the Dutch army that has been retrofitted for traveling. Check out their website at www.sanenpe.com. I put a photo at the end of this posting.

We traveled south along the island and made our first stop at Greg's favorite store again, ACE Hardware! We needed to replace the clean out plug on our hot water heater. I also picked up two LED hockey puck lights to stick on the cabinets in the bathroom and the overhead cabinet that holds our electronics. That one has a place to plug things in to recharge them, and it is hard to see in there at night. I've wasted too much time trying to force things into the plug holes in the dark! I also got an over the door hook for wet jackets, so today it is coming in handy.

Next stop was the grocery store in Buxton which had a surprising amount of reasonably fresh organic produce. We didn't want to do too much grocery shopping at island prices, so we'll stock up more on the mainland. At that time we weren't sure how long we wanted to stay in Ocracoke either.

We reached the ferry terminal about 1:15 and were third in line for the 28 vehicle ferry. We hadn't had lunch, so we quickly ate something in the RV. As it turned out we could have taken our time. We reread the ferry schedule and realized that this early in the season the ferries run every hour, not every half hour. The line grew longer and longer as we all eyed the extra ferries docked on the side of the pier. Finally it was time to load, after lots of horseplay by the employees that delayed the loading. First they loaded a whole line of vehicles that had shown up after most of the tourists in line behind us! Several irate drivers flew out of their vehicles and verbally accosted the employee directing the loading. Apparently NC Department of Transportation employees and local residents get priority. We made it on the boat with room for one more car behind us. They were parked at an angle to our bumper with literally 4 or 5 inches to spare. We were glad to make that boat and not have to wait until 3 pm.

We exited our RV and went up on the deck. The trip was scheduled to take 40 minutes. With the delay and a slow boat we didn't get in to the dock until 3:30. Sandy and all the recent storms closed the channel. The new route goes way east around the sandbars instead of due south to Ocracoke Island. There is extensive dredging taking place, which is supposed to be done by mid-April. We couldn't see a way that they can finish by then. Our boat had an extra heavy load; two RVs, a small semi truck and and a dump truck filled with beach sand! Hello...no beach sand on Ocracoke, they have to truck it in? I guess since the island is national seashore, except the small, crowded town, they can't just scoop up extra sand.

Our heavy load caused our boat to kick up sand off the bottom on our detour around the sandbars. The captain slowed way down, but depending on the tides, this is really a hazard. Every time there is another storm, this area has to be rechecked for a decent route. There were several storms besides Sandy this winter, the latest last month, that breached the dunes and flooded the highway at various spots, most notably at the S curves in Rodanthe. We were stopped there on our way to Waves, to allow the earth moving equipment to move the dunes off the road. We noticed other parts of the highway on Hatteras Island and Ocracoke Island, where the dunes were encroaching on the road. At one spot, we were driving on pavement, but there was no dune, only a small flat beach next to us and then the surf.

There are several very expensive bridge projects in the works, but what happens when the land you are bridging gets washed away? The residents are asking for short term fixes, beach replenishment and dunes plowed off the roads, but that doesn't “fix” anything! There seems to be lots of real estate for sale, but the prices are still really high considering the risks involved in owning real estate here.

We arrived in the village of Ocracoke by 4 pm. The National Seashore campground's opening is delayed until April 19^th due to sequestration, so we went to Teeter's Campground in the village. This place has mixed online reviews. We couldn't find the office. Another camper, who muttered “...boy, this is some place...” said we had to go to the house with the upper deck, ring the bell and the owner would yell down to us. The owner took us to a site that has water and electric, but no sewer, and there is no dump. The few sewer sites are next to us with jury rigged PVC pipes from their sewer connections to the septic tank. He said when the guy in front of us left the next day, we could pull forward, dump and move back. He told us to dump our grey water on the ground. So, we signed up for two nights since we knew we had a big storm coming in today and we would spend the day inside.

Yesterday evening we walked around the harbor and town. Then we tried four restaurants to get some dinner. Greg wanted fish and chips. One was still setting up for the season, one closed the kitchen early due to no business, one was empty, we looked at the blah menu and left, and the last one we came back to after rejecting it for the prices. At Dajio we sat outside in a secluded courtyard and had two nice salads. The food was good, but it wasn't Greg's fish and chips. Greg tried a new beer from Mother Earth Brewing Company in Kinston, NC, Sisters of the Moon India Pale Ale. After dinner we walked down Back Road to our campground past more interesting homes, shops and restaurants. Everything was closed. There is not much more to Ocracoke, except the lighthouse, so this morning we made our ferry reservation for 10 am tomorrow to go back over to the mainland at Cedar Island. From there we will work our way south along the coast. We have researched a few campgrounds, so we'll decide as we go where we will stay. Tomorrow the storms will have passed and we should have beautiful weather for our 2 ¼ - hour crossing!